When cell reselection or handover from a current cell to a neighboring call for a user equipment (UE) is to be considered, the UE needs to detect signal quality of the neighboring cell and send a detection result to a base station of the current cell. Operations such as cell handover or reselection are performed on the UE by the base station of the current cell according to the detection result.
In a wireless communication system, there may be multiple transmitter antennas in one cell, and coverage of different transmitter antennas may vary. In order to ensure the accuracy of the cell signal quality detection, the UE needs to detect the signal quality of some or all transmitter antennas in a neighboring cell. In the related art, a base station of a neighboring cell sends pilot measurement information through time-frequency resource blocks corresponding to each of the antennas. The UE receives the pilot measurement information transmitted in the time-frequency resource blocks, and determines the signal quality of the transmitter antennas in the neighboring cell according to the pilot measurement information.
The time-frequency resource blocks being used to transmit the pilot measurement information can also be used to transmit other information, such as communication data. The UE cannot judge (i.e., determine) what transmitted in the time-frequency resource blocks is pilot measurement information or other information (such as communication data). Since the transmitting power of the communication data and that of the pilot measurement information are different, if the time-frequency resource blocks which should have been used to transmit the pilot measurement information is used to transmit the communication data, the signal quality detection result obtained by the UE would be inaccurate, resulting in inaccurate detection result of signal quality of the entire neighboring cell.